Give your Vitamins their Vitamins!

At the bottom of every post I offer some very simple advice:  eat real food, drink plenty of water, give your vitamins their vitamins, and remember to wash your hands.   Offering advice and following advice are two very different animals.  Even I, the knower of many food-y, nutritional things, have trouble following simple, sound, sensical advice even though I know why I should.  I, just like all of you, only try to make today healthier than yesterday.  So, today I would like us all to take our vitamins!

No.  I don't mean wander out to Walmart to find cheaply made and nutritionally defunct vitamins in pill form.  Our bodies need dozens of vitamins and minerals to assist the vitamins we already make and to replace the vitamins our bodies continually use up.  Hormones, gastric juices, connective tissues, hair, teeth, gums, skin, and everything in between is made up or supported by the vitamins we eat.  If we loaded up the cart at wally world with all of the nutrients our bodies need we would be swallowing pills all day long~  multivitamins are none the wiser.

So how, then, do your give your vitamins their vitamins?  This may sound redundant, but the answer lives in real food!  The key is diversity and the clutch is we actually have to eat it.  Looking at great spinach recipes online for food inspiration is a fantastic way to diversify your diet, but if instead of spinach leaves wilted in clean, steamy water you use frozen spinach, thawed and drained, you are depleting the recipe of it's vitality.  Don't care for spinach?  Find foods that sound good to you and eat them~  but stick to the real version instead of the imitation, processed, fortified variety.

Why not fortified foods?  Fortification of food happens after a real food ingredient has been processed or heated in a way that diminishes its original nutrients.  The vitamins and minerals that are added back to the food are in lesser amounts, and typically of a man made or synthetic variety.  Vitamins are not regulated so if you are depending on a manufacturing company - that processes food in order to make a large profit and gain repeat customers - to ensure you are getting your vitamins, you will get less than you bargained for.

We all eat.  More importantly, we all eat differently.  Finding vitamins amongst the vast food markets we have at our fingertips is greatly more flavorful than fish oil capsules and vitamin tabs from manufacturers.  My advice?   Write down what you eat for a few days so you may easily identify which vitamins are in abundance and which are missing.  Find whole food recipes that supply those vitamins and follow the directions.  Remember to wash them in with water and, as always, remember to wash your hands.

Good advice?

Anna~